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On the dissipation of confidence
Now and then you read a piece that doesn’t just hit the bullseye, it produces paragraph after paragraph that cleave the arrows already quivering in the center of the target. Describing the enervated modern mind, Canadian essayist and poet David Solway says:
One detects a certain frivolity of mind, the readiness and even eagerness to capitulate to a prevailing orthodoxy, in effect, a superficiality of thought, a dwindling of intellectual range, a loathing for the things we ignorantly take for granted and a perverse desire to see them taken from us.
Exactly. The prevailing orthodoxy – at least the one that seeks to prevail – is not attractive or uplifting, and it does not even promise redemption, just a possible condition of diminished sinfulness. But its liturgy is easy to mouth, and its call-and-response portions of the service require no more than nodding.
A superficiality of thought: that seems hard to square with the wearisome complexity of CRT language, but all those words are just ornaments hung on a barren tree.
A loathing for the things we ignorantly take for granted. All the wonders of the modern world, all the things that make our lives easy compared to the experience of 99.95 of the people who ever lived, have become problematic. Thus, the perverse desire to see them taken from us. Perhaps not all of us. Air conditioning for me, but not for the developing world. A car for me and mine, but the bus for the rest.
In his recent book, The Decadent Society, Ross Douthat contends that in the midst of our presentiment of imminent cataclysm, we also paradoxically relish the approaching calamity as preferable to the sense of cultural disenchantment, “economic deceleration,” and affective sclerosis that silently afflicts us.
Few of the chattering and governing classes relish actual collapse. They have a vague hope for a short, sharp shock that instantly re-orders the Western mind to eliminate the -isms that prevent us from ascending the last few steps of the golden staircase. (More on this in a bit.) Some obsess over Climate Change to point of incapacitation, but if it wasn’t that, it would be something else. Nuclear Winter played the same role for that sort of person in the 80s.
Writing in American Greatness, Alexander Zubetov is of the same mind. We live in a decaying culture, fueled by resentment “against the great achievements of our civilization’s past,” which we can no longer emulate.
I think we can, but have chosen not to. There’s a difference. We are hampered from some things by regulatory nooses. Train projects that once could be built fairly quickly now take a decade to ensure that the breeding ground for the Striped Mite is not adversely affected. There was a time when we could emulate the great classical architectural styles, but we rejected them in favor of new modes that helped detach the pubic’s mind from history – and eventually the talents that could create the old styles were trained in other things, or too diminished in number. Now, if we wished, we could 3D print any sort of ornamentation for our public buildings – but we have chosen, or rather Father Biden has chosen for us, that the traditional styles are not be employed.
The convenient thing about CRT is its infinite applicability, its ability to poison any art, dismiss it, and insist on new criteria – not for the sake of art, for a new style, a new way of apprehending the human condition, but to ensure the correct political and social result in any endeavor. It provides good cover for the Salieris who burn inside when they hear the sublimity of Mozart, and, knowing they cannot produce its like, and knowing it will always be reminded of their mediocrity, seek to banish the good and replace it with something they regard as true, because it is ugly. If it is rejected by the old order, that is only additional proof of its truths, and of the necessaity of proclaiming it.
Despairing of retrieval, we create a wasteland, reducing everything to rubble out of petty spite and a deep sense of personal inadequacy. We welcome lockdowns, economic collapse, censorship and even an emerging police state that will change our lives, perhaps irretrievably.
Careful with that “we” here, mister.
I think he’s on to something, but I think there are other ways of looking at it. Most accepted lockdowns at the start. We chafed as time went on, dulled and numb to the waxing and waning of restrictions, unable to change anything. In this new state, the few who welcomed lockdowns thrived, and assembled authority and the mantle of virtue.
Few welcome economic collapse, except for the Marxists and Democratic Socialists. (The governing class, which is not as smart or devious as some think, may welcome the opportunities provided for the state by economic distress, but they are too accustomed to their status and pleasures to wish for the return of manual labor and the barter system)
Others welcome censorship, but have told themselves it isn’t censorship at all – how, they wonder, could any progressive believe in censorship? That’s the job of fascists and religious leaders. They just want Truth and Safety! The alternative would be the perpetuation of racism and white supremacy. Giving up hate speech to combat those vile ideas is hardly censorship. It’s commonsense Word Reform. Sensible regulation. 1A, 2A – cling bitterly to the worlds of old white slaveowners if you must, but don’t think we won’t notice.
even an emerging police state that will change our lives, perhaps irretrievably.
They don’t actual want police, because police are systemically irredeemable. They do want some form of civil authority that can ferret out and punish Hate – an elastic term they need not define, since its manifestations are obvious to all whose eyes and minds are correctly oriented.
One is also taken aback by the category of things some people are willing to surrender as a sign of their fortitude, thus furnishing a glimpse into the make-up of the progressivist personality, the objects it finds of unique importance, and the particular destitutions it is willing to undergo as it prepares for the emergent order of things.
He links to a Toronto Sun columnist whose Feb 11 offering was called “Prepare for the long haul — the pandemic is far from over.” Why? THE MUTATIONS. Oh, the restrictionists are practically priapic at the idea of the variants. What must we be prepared to accept?
It’s not enough to close all the barber shops for six weeks. What is needed is a permanent way to let hairdressers work safely.
As if life is merely a matter of how you get your locks shorn. Anything else?
Similarly, restaurateurs will have to come to terms with the fact that eating out is a luxury the world can no longer afford.
A luxury! A luxury the WORLD must foreswear. As Solway notes, it’s telling that the columnist talks not of museums, concerts, travel, any of the other things that make life grand and delicious. Haircuts and coffee shops, that’s it.
This thing is far from over. Those who think vaccines alone will miraculously solve our woes are whistling into the wind.
Better that we prepare ourselves for a grim future. Because that’s what we are likely to get.
The man is a coward.
There’s no other word for it. And that’s what it all comes down to: cowardice masquerading as prudence, cowardice in the raiments of wisdom, cowardice dressed up in the armor of bravery, cowardice emboldened by everyone’s silent, weary acquiescence, and insists it is actually brave to imagine a worse world and will it into being.
Because the old one, you know, well, it had its problems. Stripped of the burden of history, won’t we all stand up straight and tall?
(Editor’s note: we apologize for the ableist characterization that valorizes and privileges “standing, ” and have sacked the columnist. Our thanks to all the readers who wrote in with objections. Your bravery in speaking up against these hurtful words are an inspiration to us all.)
Published in General
People have been very effective in weaponizing the language in such a way that it’s hard to get to a point where a discussion can actually occur.
I spent at least four hours with a public school teacher (there was imbibing) before I could get her to agree that some cultures revere education more than other cultures and that it wasn’t racist to notice, or to comment on it.
One more evening and a bottle of wine to get her to agree with school choice.
We call that “drinking one for the team.”
It’s taken awhile, but I have found my talent.
James Lileks is the only writer I know who can write an article from which I could delete all but one non-essential but brilliant sentence and still have the one of the three best articles I’ve read in six months.
In this case, I have read only the first sentence, and am already assured of an outstanding piece of prose, even if it turns out that his keyboard malfunctioned right after that opening was written, and the rest is just random characters.
Absolutely Brilliant piece. Much to ponder.
Annefy: “People have been very effective in weaponizing the language in such a way that it’s hard to get to a point where a discussion can actually occur.”
Great thought.
I have come to believe that deep down beyond where they want to acknowledge most on the Left know that they are perpetuating and contributing to absolute Evil. All this weaponizing the language and obscuring truth and meaning are simply a tactic and technique for them to avoid dealing with and to avoid taking responsibility for the evil that they have done. They simply cannot face what they have done. All of life for them has become an exercise in avoidance from the terrible reality that they have foisted on the public.
You are very kind, Mark. For my next Ricochet contribution I will get out an old gunky keyboard that has sticky letters, and we will test your hypothesis. ;)
I get the point, and it might be true for some, but most? Robespierre went to the scaffold believing he’d been correct, I’ll bet. Everyone wants to think they are doing good, ushering in the glorious rightness. The most zealous are convinced of their virtue; the followers outsource their conscience to those who have transcendent messages. The ability of people to rationalize and retcon is almost boundless, and few dig deep enough into themselves to confront what they have enabled, excused, endorsed, or merely permitted. It’s painful. It’s an electric shock. You drop the wire, and turn back to the crowd to see what they are shouting today. That’s the thing. That’s the new thing. That’s the chant that binds you to your times, to something that moves above and beyond your own sad self.
I guaran-fargin-tee you thee guys in the Bernie Bro Project Veritas videos talking about the need for violence and re-education camps believe they are operating in the service of good.
And the more certain in their thinking that their means justify whatever ends they want to be the moral truth, and convinced by their own faith in that cause that they will be the gatekeepers and rulers, the further they indulge the most authoritarian tendencies and righteous vilification of dissent. It is the only way. The closer to false utopian theories they get, the further from reason and empiricism and humanity they become and fall into an illogical reality disjointed from natural rights.
Lots of good word-things in the OP and article. It does seem to boil down to what’s easy, meaning it’s easier to mouth the current platitude, whether fully embracing the idea or not, than it is to fight it. If you’re forced to sit through some additional D&I training in the last year after the felon, I mean George Floyd killing, that means you shrug your shoulders, roll your eyes from your remote location (because we cannot go back to work yet, that would be murdercide), click “Complete” at the end, and go back to work.
To acquiesce is not just easy, it’s almost comforting, because now you don’t have to fight anymore. Just agree and it’ll be fine. Even better, if you agree, you’ll be rewarded, and probably promoted, under our new Race And Genitals Based Promotion System (RAGBPS).
The left no longer considers beauty to be art.
Think of the average 13-year-old boy. That’ll help.
It is far, far too late for that. Welcome to the club. Well, maybe not so much a club as a niche. Or maybe a category. Yes, definitely a category but perhaps something more…
You just used cowardly, priapic, and decent in a sentence. An oxymoronic triple crown. I am amazed.
You noticed that, eh? I’ll have to do better.